HSBC (Photo : Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes)
Nina Ricci's granddaughter Arlette Ricci, 73, the Nina Ricci fashion company heiress, was recently convicted of tax fraud by a Paris court when authorities discovered she was hiding millions in an offshore Swiss bank account of HSBC.
Arlette was sentenced to one-year jail time and has been ordered to pay a hefty fine of €1 million ($1.1m). The court also had to confiscate two of her current properties worth about €4 million ($4.2m), BBC reported.
The heiress will be spending three years in prison as a sentence for tax fraud in the first high profile conviction to be discovered from the leakage of client details from HSBC's Swiss private banking arm.
Arlette's two propertied which were confiscated by the Paris court are located in Paris and Corsica. The court labeled the said tax fraud incident to be an "exceptional threat to public order and the republican pact."
Arlette is just one of the thousands of alleged tax evaders that were included in the list leaked by former HSBC employee Hervé Falciani in 2010. Around 60 to 70 tax evaders that are likely to face criminal trial due to tax evasion, the prosecutors explained.
The heiress was found to be hiding $22 million from the French taxman by hiding it on an offshore account based in Panama. The accusation was denied claiming that what she did was legal, Financial Times reported.
Jean-Marc Fedida, Ricci's lawyer, disclosed that his client will make an appeal but asks the court for a less strict prison terms. He complained that his client is being used by the court as a warning to others.
Arlete's 51-year-old daughter, Margot Vignat, was also convicted of tax evasion and was sentenced to an eight-month suspension.
